Planning an Effective Notification Strategy

As part of my UX (Experience Design) process when working on mobile design projects, I like to provide a list of deliverables, that includes:

Information Architecture Sitemap

App Flowmap

Wireframes (annotated)

Notification Strategy Plan

Prototypes

Competitive Analysis Report

Personas

User Testing

Personas

If you notice in the list, #4 says Notification Strategy Plan. What this is is basically a spreadsheet listing proposed notifications.

We all know how important notifications are for direct user engagement. But what’s more important in the first place is to plan for an effective notification strategy.

Title of Notification: A title to easily reference the notification.

Notification Message: A descriptive message that will be displayed as notification.

Call to Action: Actions to navigate the user to a screen in the app or outside. Example: Renew membership, share recipe, etc.

Landing Screen: The screen that the Call to Action will take the user to depending on what the notification is about.

Trigger: What event caused this notification to be sent?

Frequency: How many times should the notification be sent and how frequently. Example: one time, scheduled, recurring, 10 days, 20 days, etc.

Type (In-App, Push): Is the notification In-App or push. Some other types that could be used are (depending on the project), email, phone, sms, etc.

User/Actor: Who will this notification be sent to. Again, depending on the project, it could be something like Loyalty customers, Patients, etc.

User Data Collected: What type of user data are you collecting with this notification. Examples: name, email, phone, etc.

Notes/Comments: An open place to add any thoughts, questions or ideas about this notification.

From the above bullets, I find bullet 3 and 4 really important. They help you in not only informing your designs but also making better product decisions.

Having a notification strategy plan in place helps the business in thinking of better ways they can engage users, provide convenience and value to app users without causing frustration which push notifications are sadly known to do.